Appliance
by Roadstergal
Summary: The Dwarfers stop for a breath of arid desert planet air. Takes place just before Terrorform.
1. Chapter 1

"Turn." The nasal voice echoed in the empty quarters as Rimmer started a new page of Hammond Organs And You. The electronic book was a lovely invention, and definitely a find in the Locker Room Game that made up for the tampons, boots, and pornographic gay videos he had 'won' previously. A pity he rarely got to read it; Lister amused himself by dropping bits and bobs on it that obscured just half the screen, or turning it upside-down, and then apologizing profusely later when Rimmer ranted at him. The skutters would giggle just as often as they'd actually move it so as to be readable again, so half a book a month was a decent going.

"Turn."

A familiar set of footsteps came barging up the corridor. Rimmer cringed. Even before the crew died, he always knew when Lister was coming. Nobody else whacked the floor like a pregnant mammoth with every step. Sure enough, he caught Lister's entrance out of the corner of his eye a moment later. He was grinning like a tub of naked women doused in curry had just docked. Rimmer tried to ignore him.

"Oi! Smeghead! We've found a planet."

Rimmer tried to make a noise that sounded like "Emrph," convey disgust, preoccupation, and utter disinterest.

Lister plopped down in a chair next to Rimmer. "We're going exploring! It has an S3 atmosphere, so Cat and I can breathe."

"Pity," Rimmer muttered.

Lister pulled off his hat and waved it towards the door. "Come on, man, you're coming with us."

"No, I'm not."

Lister frowned. He picked up the book and tossed it on his bed, face down. Rimmer leapt to his feet, noted that the book was now completely unreadable, and turned to Lister with a glare.

"Move yer cowardly transparent bum, Rimmeh," Lister said, waving his hat behind him as he walked out of the door.

"It's incorporeal, not transparent, you stupid goit!" Rimmer yelled, hurrying after him. "And you have no respect for the dead!"

xxxxxx

Rimmer was still in a highly upset and put-upon mood half an hour later as he sat in the back of Starbug. Cat and Lister were terribly excited about the prospect of breathing non-ship air for the first time in over a year; they were elbowing each other and giggling as they punched up the few visuals Starbug allowed. Rimmer sighed. Quite frankly, he would be happier with a bit of vacuum.

The few visuals did make one thing very clear - this was a hot, arid planet. Brown, cracked dirt fused into rocky solidity stared up at them, and restless movement under the planet's crust had thrust spires of rock into the air; they dotted the landscape, sprinkled among twining chasms. Kryten set them down on what looked to be a fairly dull plate of that hard, packed earth.

Lister stepped outside, blinking at the harsh sunlight. In deference to the heat, he had shed his jacket and T-shirt, stripping down to a grease-stained undershirt. He slung his bazookoid across his back and climbed down the gangway. Cat slipped on a pair of shades and followed. "Hoo, boy! This planet is as hot as... well, me!" Kryten followed. Rimmer contemplated staying in the Bug, but the irony of it getting attacked or blowing up while everyone else was off of it would be one he would never live... er... die down. He climbed the gangway with bad grace and joined the rest at the bottom. His light bee tickled the back of his mind with the knowledge that it was exactly 38.4 degrees Centigrade. It was one of the many, many annoying things about being a hologram; he no longer experienced states like 'hot' and 'cold.'

"Wheeeeew!" Lister wiped sweat off of his forehead with the back of his forearm. "Quite a holiday destination!" The tone was sarcastic, but Rimmer would wager his monogrammed handkerchiefs that Lister was having a ball (they were monogrammed with the wrong initials, but they were a gift from his mum, after all). Cat pulled a silk scarf out of his pocket and dabbed gently at a single bead of perspiration on his forehead. Even his sweat was handsome. "Warm is good, but I see nothin' to eat and nowhere comfy to sleep, bud."

"Yeh never know! Let's take a look around." Lister patted Cat on the shoulder and pointed to a ridge of low-lying outcroppings to the right. "We'll go that way. Rimmer, Krytes - you two check out what's over there." He pointed to the scattered spires to their left.

"You first, Fullerene head," Rimmer said.

Kryten was looking around at the packed-dirt planet with a very pleased expression on his face, imagining what he could do with a Hoover and a feather duster. "Certainly, sir."

xxxxxx

Lister paused, yet again, to wait for Cat to catch up. He was starting to wish he had gone with Kryten, instead - even considering the daunting task of convincing Rimmer to do anything cooperative with Cat. The feline in question finished brushing the dust off of his cream pant legs and matching spats, tapped the dirt off of the brush, placed it back in his pocket, dabbed his face gently with his silk scarf, and sauntered up to where Lister waited impatiently. "Why I ever agreed to go out on a brown planet, I will never know. Brown is _not_ my color. Next planet had better be mauve, bud."

"You look lovely, Cat," Lister said, with zero enthusiasm. He entered the shade of the rockpiles they had seen from Starbug with relief. His undershirt was soaked under the arms and down the back, and sweat trickled uncomfortably down his buttock crevice. The rocks were fascinating, however; they were piled at fantastic angles and were banded in pretty shades of brown, some bands glimmering like glass. Faces, spaceships, and strange animals jumped out at him as he squinted and tilted his head this way or that. They made their way along the pile, Cat pawing with interest at the sparkling glassy bands.

"Hey!" Lister heard Cat exclaim behind him. "Pretty!"

Lister backtracked. He had missed a spot where the rocks doubled back on themselves, forming a crude entrance. Lister walked through to what looked almost like an inset, roofless antechamber. Cat danced around inside, touching what had attracted his attention - thousands, hundreds of thousands of fragments of plastic and metal, varying in size from fingernail to larger than Lister. They glittered in the sun, hues of iridescent purple and red and green and blue. Some were just plain silver, some transparent, but they all looked to have been collected for their visual appeal. Lister looked closer at the markings on one.

"Erm - Cat?" he asked. Cat was spraying some of the larger and shinier fragments. "_This_ is mine, _this_ is mine - what is it, monkey boy?"

"These are spaceships, Cat. Spaceships and landers, all of them."

"Yeah, so?"

"So - they're all in pieces."

"Yeah, so?"

"So something tore a lot of spaceships into pieces."

Cat mulled this for a moment. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking, bud?"

"I'm thinking we should leg it."

A noise came drifting over the rocks. It was somewhere between the growl of a diesel engine and the whine of tearing metal, and a slobber slurped its way into the middle. Cat and Lister stared at each other for a moment.

"I hope you're right behind me, dormouse cheeks," Cat said, and then tore away with the legendary speed of his kind. Lister followed as quickly as his short legs would take him. Behind them, the ground shook, and the strange sound was repeated - but with a questioning hitch in it, one that turned quickly into an angry roar. It's just our luck, Lister thought; we meet a strange alien creature, and it knows enough Cat to know that someone had stopped by to take its stuff. Lister risked a glance behind him, and immediately regretted it. The creature had clambered over the rock face, and was chasing the intruders who had claimed its shiny things. It had a flattened triangular face and slitted eyes, indeed cat-ish. Lister doubted that they had ever made cats quite that big, though. It pounded along ponderously on legs that would have fit an elephant better, and a very scorpion-like tail waved behind it. It was a cat-GELF, and their only saving grace was that the huge, thick legs did not move very quickly.

By the time it occurred to Lister to think about their destination, it had been decided for them. They had passed Starbug, and were heading towards the spires where they had sent Kryten and Rimmer. He groaned internally. Half of their backup would want to clean the GELF, and half would want to turn tail and run from it. Well, thought Lister, maybe it would get knackered chasing Rimmer, allowing them to reach Starbug and escape.

xxxxxx

Rimmer was having, as nearly as he could determine, the exact opposite of a wonderful time. The planet was mind-numbingly dull. The spires were exactly the same as they had looked from Starbug, only bigger; featureless, dark, rocky spikes that would not be out of place on a punk rocker's wristband, thrusting up from equally featureless, equally dark, equally rocky ground. Some of the spikes had deep, narrow caves in their bases, which Kryten exclaimed with excitement did not look like natural formations. So fucking what, Rimmer thought. He sighed and did his best to communicate his boredom with every bit of body language at his disposal.

He craned his head. He could swear he had heard something. He strained, and heard it again, louder.

"Guuuuuuuuys!" Lister's voice drifted towards them. "Leeeggg ittt!"

Rimmer's jaw dropped at the sight of the... thing that was slowly plodding towards them from across the plain, Cat and Lister sprinting before. He started to poke uselessly at Kryten's arm. "K... K... K..."

"What is it, sir?" Kryten asked placidly. He was absorbed in analyzing a rather large lake of something caustic they had come across, something highly alkaline that was the same brown color as the rest of the dull planet.

"K... K... K..." Rimmer poked his incorporeal finger even farther into Kryten's arm. "Kryten!"

The mechanoid looked up, slightly irritated at being pulled from his task. His eyes widened. Cat and Lister pounded towards and past them, not slowing a lick. Rimmer and Kryten turned and followed.

"Sirs!" Kryten yelled at the top of his artificial lungs. "There are caves in the spires!" Cat's sharp eyes saw them first, and he dove into one, followed by Kryten. Lister veered to follow, but the narrow cleft did not leave him much room. "Go into one of the other ones!" Kryten suggested, and Lister tore across to the next spire over, Rimmer on his heels, almost overlapping with the living man, the lumbering GELF so close that its spittle flew through Rimmer's incorporeal body and spattered Lister's back. They dove into the tight cave at the base of the closest adjacent spire. The GELF put out its huge feet and plowed to a halt, its head smacking the spire with a nasty wet thump. It pulled back and shook its head, then put one yellow slit of an eye to the slit of the cave, glaring balefully at where Rimmer and Lister huddled in the rear. It pawed uselessly at the gash in the rock with its thick leg, then settled back to glare at each spire.

Lister's radio crackled to life. "Sir? Are you all right?"

Lister unhooked his radio with shaking fingers. "Yeah, I think so, Krytes. It can't get into these little cavey-things." Rimmer rolled his eyes.

"Yes, it seems that we have unintentionally made use of a defense system used by the former inhabitants of this planet."

"Well, it can't get us - but how do we get out?"

"I believe we have unintentionally discovered why the inhabitants are former, sir."

Lister sighed and looked at the GELF. The single eye it had trained on their spire had not so much blinked as it stared at him. "What do we do now? We need to get back to Starbug!"

"We could wait for it to get bored and leave us, sir," Kryten's voice crackled.

"If it gets bored, it'll rip Starbug to shreds, like it did the other ships!"

"Wait," Rimmer asked, eyes narrowing, "What other ships?"

Lister sighed. "We found that thing's collection. It likes to take pretty bits of ships and landers it's found and collect them."

Rimmer took a deep breath, prepared to let loose with a volley of invective on the subject of Lister's thoughtful choices of tourist destination, his proper respect for Space Corps guidelines to exploring new planets, and his overall prudence in strange scenarios, which might very well have morphed into a lengthier rant on Lister's general intelligence and pedigree, had it not been cut off before it began by a blast of bazookoid fire from the other spire. Both Rimmer and Lister jumped involuntarily at the screech the creature spat out. It leapt, as well as it could, for the other spire, and clawed at it with ferocity, chewing on the top with its catlike teeth. Eventually, its fit of temper ran its course, and it settled back onto its elephantine haunches, waving its stinger of a tail in the air.

"Krytes! Cat! Are you OK?" Lister said into the radio, his voice cracking.

"These spires are very well-designed, Mister Lister," Kryten's voice came back. "Unfortunately, so is the GELF. The bazookoid seemed to only irritate it."

"What now?" Lister asked. Cat's voice came over the radio. "Keep it entertained and wait for it to go to sleep waitin' for us. Sneak out when it does."

"_Brilliant_ plan, pussy," Rimmer grated. "_Everyone_ knows that cats can't hear or smell, after all, and it therefore won't wake up as soon as we set foot out of the cave and have us for hors d'oeuvres."

"Got a better plan, goalpost head?" Cat snapped back.

"In the absence of anything vaguely resembling a good idea, I suggest we try this one," Kryten concurred.

"Right," Lister agreed. "Keep your eyes out, mates." He turned off the radio. Rimmer sat and traded glares with the GELF. It had some impressive ones, which Rimmer filed for future reference.

"Why do yeh always have to be so smegging negative, man?" Lister asked.

"Negative!" Rimmer asked, irate. "We're stuck on Listy's ideal desert vacation spot, trying to escape a cat-monster that plays with spaceships instead of mice with a strategy that wouldn't fool the donor in a brain-swap operation, and you're upset with me not being _upbeat_ about it all!"

"I dunno why you're so upset," Lister groused. "It can't hurt you. I never understand that. You're dead, you're invulnerable, and you're still the biggest bloody coward I've ever met."

"Invulnerable?" Rimmer asked, astonished. "You have an entire body, Lister! You could lose a limb or two and keep going!" He looked at Lister critically. "It might even improve your looks a bit," he observed. Lister sighed. "Me? I have a light bee. One little chunk of metal. Nothing between it and," he waved his hand to indicate 'everything,' "but a little light play. I'm _more_ vulnerable than you are!"

"And you're a smegging coward."

"Just self-preservation, Listy."

Lister got to his feet with a growl. "And just what is there to preserve? Such an honorable, charismatic, kind, worthwhile man, yeah?" He dropped his bazookoid and advanced on Rimmer. Rimmer started to back up, then realized he was moving towards the cave entrance and stopped. "Explain this to me, man. Tell me how you're not a waste of battery power that migh' be better used for a sex toy or a waffle iron." Rimmer did not dare back up anymore, but the anger in Lister's eyes was like nothing he had seen before. Lister reached, slowly and deliberately, into Rimmer's chest, fumbling blindly until his hand closed on Rimmer's light bee. Rimmer had thought that it was impossible for his bee to communicate any data that was not purely factual, but some note, some electronic simulation of pain and terror, was sounding in the back of his mind that his light bee was in danger, and that it was bad, bad, _bad_!

Lister pulled on the bee, drawing Rimmer closer. Rimmer flailed, trying to push at the sweaty, angry man, but his hands went right through. Lister pulled on Rimmer's bee, leaning forward, until Rimmer was half-overlapped from the chest down, his legs in the earth past his ankles to bring him to Lister's height, and Lister was staring him straight in the eyes. "Tell me, man."

Rimmer had nothing to say. He stared into Lister's brown eyes, where an intensity that Rimmer could not place sparkled. His light bee still pulsed _Under attack! Bad!_ into his consciousness as Lister held the bee in his gauntleted fist. Lister's demand admitted no evasions, no changes of subject, no distracting snark. Rimmer had no answer, because Lister was absolutely right. He was a useless, snarky, cowardly, small-minded pile of smeg. So cowardly that he could not admit it, even to himself, most times. So cowardly that he could not even do what he had been so often asked to do, in the beginning - trade, give his form to Kochanski or Petersen or... someone, anyone that the last man alive actually _liked_. So petty that he could not give up this mockery of an existence he had, with this sniping, spiteful friendship he had developed, that was nevertheless closer than any he had formed while alive.

Something broke in Lister, and he sighed and let go of the bee. As Rimmer staggered out of the ground, Lister sat down and pulled the bazookoid into his lap. "Never mind," he mumbled. "We'll wait. We'll follow _Cat's_ plan. Do something useful or shut it."

Rimmer took a deep, airless breath. In the future, when he was asked about his next action, he would snarkily reply that he would rather die than spend a night in quarters _that_ close with Lister. But no such thoughts were going through his head. None were going through his head at all. He merely walked outside.

The half-dozing cat-GELF snapped fully awake, its slitted yellow eyes fixed on the irresistible lure of the hologram's iridescent red uniform. Rimmer did not look at it. He rather placidly walked right past it. It snorted and leapt.

If you had stopped Rimmer at that moment and asked him if he was grateful about his malfunctioning thought processes, he is not sure what he would have said. If you asked any time afterwards, he would have said yes, smeg yes, would-I-like-Napoleon's-autograph yes. Because he completely forgot about the alkaline lake, and his light bee hovered over the brown liquid as if it were brown dirt. The cat-GELF's pounce buried it to its massive toes in caustically basic fluid, splashing rather a lot of it on bazookoid-proof legs and chest - and getting quite a bit in its eyes as it lowered its face to bite. Its attack growl turned into a shriek of pain, and it lumbered across the arid plain as fast as its stocky legs would take it, yowling its displeasure to whoever cared to listen.

Whoever cared to listen did not include Cat, Kryten, and Lister; they bolted from the cave and hightailed it towards Starbug. Lister turned and hollered at Rimmer, "Rimmer! Get movin'!"

Rimmer seemed to snap out of a reverie. He noted where he stood, yelped, and sprinted for the shore, before his subconscious took over and dropped him ankle-deep into the lake. They pelted their way across the dusty plain to Starbug, almost pushed each other off of the gangway getting aboard, and took off with barely time to strap in first.

Cat, naturally, was aghast at the dirt and sweat on his best cream-colored silk outfit, and headed for the showers in Starbug's meager sleeping cabins to freshen up for an hour or two. Kryten and Lister sat in the two front seats of Starbug, speaking animatedly about the planet, the past inhabitants thereof, and the possible original purpose for the GELF.

This suited Rimmer. It fit him to a smegging tee. He did not want to look at Lister, and Lister was pointedly avoiding looking at him. He sat in the midsection, listening to the rise and fall of their conversation, feeling very much like someone had left the waffle iron on, and would shortly notice the error and switch it off.


	2. Lies

**A/N: This story moves into slash with this chapter. It picks up at the very end of Terrorform.**

"I mean - you didn't really feel that, deep down, I'm an OK sort of bloke; I'm not such a bad old stick once you get to know me. You didn't really mean any of that, did you?"

Lister just stared at Rimmer. He looked at that stupid daffy grin that sat like a sagging lump of putty under his H. That bloody H. The hologram was smiling like something lovely had happened; like they all had not just been stuck in that morass of self-loathing that was his mind, likely to die if they didn't spit out that tripe about loving him. Loving him! Dear lord, loving Rimmer!

Yeah, Arnold, Lister thought; you _are_ such a bad old stick. Take a look around. You turned what should have been your dream - a physical presence - into some nightmare torture S&M scenario. And now you want us - the lowliest, grottiest technician in the Space Corps, a domestic house-cleaning android, a self-obsessed creature that evolved from old preggie Frankenstein - to justify your existence. You're looking at us like we all hold the key to yer heart. You need the three of us to make all of it better, somehow. Well, we ain't gonna, you daft smeghead.

Lister tapped his fingers on the joystick, looking at the grin, and at the H that meant he could not touch it. He was startled at the anger that was roiling up in him. He _had_ touched Rimmer, back on that psi-moon; he had touched him for the first time since the other man had died. For all of the times that he had wished Rimmer were corporeal, so he could strangle the goit for all of his whinging and anal-retentiveness and cowardice and... to just put a _stop_ to that annoying nasal voice, he found that once he had the ability to, he had wanted, instead, to do something so far from choking Rimmer as to be positively obscene. He had put his hand on the smeghead's leg, feeling, for the first time, the soft velour, knowing there was soft skin underneath. He brushed a sleeve and a leg against the other man's as he leaned in, tightening his grip. Lister had forgotten that Rimmer had a pulse, had warmth, had the smell of soap and that godawful aftershave he had slathered on himself when he was alive.

I could have, you know, Lister thought, still staring at the hologram's hopeful face. I could have gone higher. I could have hooked my fingers into the waistband and yanked, ripping the cloth off of you, using me knife if I had to. I would have relished the startled look you would have given me before I spun you around and bent you over the storage boxes in the cargo bay, then licked that tight insecure ass of yours, Cat and Kryten be damned. But no, I had to worry about _launching_. About getting us off of the bloody moon before we were sucked down and killed by your own damn insecurity. It didn't have to have been that way, you bastard. It was all up to you. If only you were a little more secure. A little happier. I could have taught that lust-monster of yours a thing or two and sent it home whimpering. But you just wouldn't be Arnold Judas Rimmer if you let anything good happen to you. Me. Us. That wouldn't be Rimmer enough, would it? You'd rather drag us all down than let me feel a bit of pleasure with you.

"No," Lister said, staring right into Rimmer's eyes. Hoping, somehow, that the self-loathing beast would give one final howl and reach up, pulling the Bug back into the mire of Rimmer's subconscious. Make that H vanish. Give Lister another chance to do this... properly.

The stupid grin dropped off of Rimmer's face. He sucked his lower lip in, looking down, and then looked back up at Lister. Whatever he saw on the other man's face, it made him turn around and walk back into the cargo hold.

Back at Red Dwarf later that night, Lister stared at the ceiling, feeling the empty bunk below him, wondering when it would be filled again. He knew, somehow, that it would be a very long time.


	3. Lingering

The concepts of 'day' and 'night' had no meaning in deep space. For the purposes of its crew, Red Dwarf had narrow strips of light running around the middle of all personal quarters, conference rooms, and recreational areas, which varied in color to indicate the time of day according to a standard ship's day. Rimmer therefore had no trouble knowing when Lister would be asleep. Sometime between the almost-off indigo of night and the grimy purple of morning, Lister would fall into snoring repose, a can of lager typically balanced gently in his armpit. Rimmer chose that time to come back, stopping outside of their nicked officers' quarters to ensure that Lister's snrrrrk... pause.. liquid snort... snrrrk snore was firmly in place.

He wished, heartily, that he had not come back at all. Red Dwarf was larger than most cities. He could live a lifetime and more there without ever seeing Lister. He resolved to, over and over. Every time they fought and Lister won. Every time Lister somehow found a way to pull a prank on an incorporeal dead man. When Lister burned his father's chest. Every time, Rimmer resolved to just _stay_ away from the bloody gimp, haunting the ship for eternity like a neurotic ghost. But he never did stay away. No matter how long he stayed away, he always ended up missing... his bunk. How he wished that he were not so desperate for company that he _always_ had to come back, like a thief in the night, never saying a word about his absence to Lister.

This was the longest he had stayed away. Two months and a few days. He had been desperate for company two weeks ago, but the knowledge of how Lister truly felt kept him away for longer. He had known before, of course, but somehow having it stated explicitly brought it home in a way that mere implicit knowledge, even implicit knowledge on the level of knowing that gravity would continue to function for the foreseeable future, did not. It galled him to know that he was so lonely that he would long for a bunk below a toenail-chewing git who made no secret of despising him.

Rimmer stared at the bunk above, wide awake, listening to the horrid unpredictability of the snoring above, trying to hear a melody in it. It stopped, and he held his pointless hologrammatic breath, waiting for it to restart. It did not. Instead, he heard a heavy sigh, and heard the noise of Lister moving around above him. He heard Lister climb down, making fumbling noises in the pitch darkness. Suddenly, Rimmer felt weight, insofar as he could feel anything, on top of his light bee. Lister was lying on Rimmer's bunk, his back squishing the light bee into the foam mattress, three-quarters overlapped with Rimmer's projection, as nearly as Rimmer could judge. The goit started to shift as he grumbled something slurred to himself.

"What the smeg are you doing, Lister?" Rimmer asked. His voice sounded just about where Lister's ear canal terminated at the drum. Lister did an impressive horizontal leap, yelping in a freakishly high-pitched voice. He rolled off of the bunk and yelled, "Lights!" They blinked at each other for a moment, Lister on his feet and staggering slightly, trying to acclimate to the abrupt brightness.

"Do you want this bunk, too, Lister? Shall I _mosey_ on back to technician's quarters?" Rimmer asked, testily, now back to his more usual position on top of the mattress. He propped himself up on his elbows.

"Sorry, man," Lister said in a sleep-bleary voice. "I din' know yeh had come back. No problems." He spread his hands, nervously, looked from side to side, and took a deep breath. He clambered back onto his bunk, and called lights off. Rimmer shook his head and lay back on the pillow he couldn't feel, waiting for the resumption of the liquid snores he had grown used to falling asleep to the sound of.

xxxxxx

Rimmer poked around in the comm room the next day, pretending that something might have gone wrong in his absence, and that he might actually be able to do something about it if it had. After a few hours, Holly testily told him to leave her the smeg alone and find some other silicone-based life form to annoy the solder out of. Rimmer saluted her with two fingers and wandered back down to their quarters, wondering what the chances were of finding his book in a readable state, or of being enough of a pain in the ass to get someone to make it that way. He slowed as he approached their quarters and heard Kryten and Lister talking with each other, over the unmistakable sound of the mechanoid cleaning the room.

"...ow, man. I mean, of course you have emotions! Look at Holly. Hell, look at Rimmer. They're electronic lifeforms, too, yeah?"

Kryten chuckled the chuckle that made Rimmer want to stuff his groinal attachment into it and set it on Super-Suck. "Ah, well, there you are, sir. Those aren't actually emotions. They're computer simulations of emotions; algorithms designed to elicit responses appropriate to human emotional response. None of us actually _feel_, sir."

Speak for yourself, you oversize Ken doll, Rimmer thought. He walked past their quarters, irate.

xxxxxx

Rimmer lay in the observation bubble, watching the stars. Sol would not even be visible from where they were. Three million years away.

Three million years and some change ago, he had really _been_ someone. Well, not really. Not at all. He had been a nothing, just like now. But somehow, it had been more bearable then. He could believe in something more. He could imagine that someday, somehow, he would do something that would make his parents proud, the stupid prissy bloody gits, and then rub their noses in it. He held out hopes of promotion, of being recognized by the faceless Elite who would, eventually, welcome him with open arms. But now? His parents had died disappointed. The faceless others were now lifeless, as well, long gone. The last human alive, his one chance at redemption in the eyes of his species, hated him. And he could only be raised in the other man's eyes by slobbing about in his underwear and listening to Rasta Billy Skank.

Rimmer sighed and closed his eyes.

xxxxxx

Lister sat and tapped his cheek with a pen, pondering, as Kryten finished the dusting. "Kryters..." he said, thoughtfully.

"Yes, Mister Lister?" Kryten asked, looking around.

"Well, you say electronic emotions are just algorithms. But aren't human emotions chemical algorithms? I mean, you have _these_ combinations, and you feel _this_ way. Yeh can even muck about with them with chemistry, can't yeh?"

Krtyen paused, puzzled.

"So they're no' really any less valid emotions than human emotions, aren't they?"

Kryten smiled and shook his head. "Don't be so silly, Mister Lister."

Lister laughed and turned back to his join-the-dots book.

"Hmm." Lister looked up at where Kryten was making their beds. "I usually only change Mister Rimmer's bed once a month, because he doesn't really use it, does he?"

Lister frowned. "What's up?"

"The sheets, sir! They're..." Kryten frowned, puzzled, and pulled them off of Rimmer's bed. "Well, they're crunchy, sir. Have you eaten curries here?"

Lister's eyebrows shot up, then dove back down again. He cleared his throat, embarrassed. "Er, yes. Curries. I must have spilled." He looked at the sheets Kryten was holding, which were notably devoid of fluorescent patches. "Erm - I forgot to add the turmeric." He smiled weakly. Kryten appeared satisfied, however, and changed out both bunks, with an extra run to the linen cabinet on deck 536.

xxxxxx

Rimmer lay on the crackling fresh sheets later that week, unable to feel their cleanliness and high thread count. Lister had tired of listening to him say "Turn," and had thrown the electronic book into his dirty sock basket. So Rimmer lay on his bunk, seething, staring at the ceiling and imagining the unfortunate book melting into goo in such hostile conditions.

"Hey, man," Lister said from the table.

"Mmrph."

"I just wanted to say..." Lister trailed off. He coughed and restarted. "It was a really brave thing you did, yeh know, back on that planet with the GELF."

"Mmrph."

Lister paused and took another puff off of his cigar. "Well, fine, " he muttered. He dropped the cigar into his can of lager and hopped onto the top bunk, shedding his overalls and dropping them off the end. "Lights."

Rimmer stared at the darkness above his bunk, thinking. "You know something, Lister?"

Lister's first snore was cut off with a snort. He coughed. "What?" he asked, blearily.

"I used to daydream." Rimmer paused, tapping his fingers together. "I used to dream that I was a writer."

Lister waited for more. When it was not forthcoming, he asked, "Yeh?"

"I would daydream that I was a writer, writing about some poor sad sod's life, and that I was just getting far too into it. I thought that if I waited long enough, someone would come by and shake me and tell me that I had been working on the blasted book for far too long, and would I please just finish it and move on to something else?"

Lister lay quietly above him, breathing the breath of the awake and the waiting-for-the-punch-line.

"It's been three million and thirty-three years. I wish someone would just check up on the daft git at the typewriter already."

Only silence came from the bunk above him. Rimmer sighed and closed his eyes, waiting for the lullaby of Lister's snores.

"Well, man," Lister's voice came from above, "You're not the only frustrated one." Rimmer frowned. And the lullaby began.


	4. Want

"Oh, _that_ Rimmer."

Smug grin. Flared nostrils. Part on the left. Overly tight trousers. _That_ Rimmer.

Yeah, yer brow furrowed as you looked at that liberal dousing of Tabasco splooge over the oniony cornflakes. A suck right from out of the bottle would deepen those furrows and widen the flare of the nostrils to the dimensions of the St. Louis arch, wouldn't it? Yes. Spread the disgust and frustration a little.

Piddling, it was. Nothing next to my frustration and disgust. You had all that time, you know. How many years were you my bunkmate, back on the stunted red one? You wasted that time, you did. While you were hanging your ironed underwear on coathangers, you would talk to me about the beauty of Napoleon, the various kinds of twentieth century telegraph poles, the undiscovered genius of Yanni, the excitement of Morris dancing, until I was ready to grab one of those coathangers, stick it up my nose, and stir my brain until the pain stopped. Instead, I would pick my nose and flick it onto your covers, or spill lager on your revision timetable. Urinate in your boots. Tell Bent Bob you were gay and fancied him, so he kissed you on the lips in the mess hall. Anything to piss you off, because lord, you pissed me off, with your neatness and stodginess and cowardice and fecking superior everyone-loves-me attitude, despite the fact that _nobody_ loved you, not even yer mum, because you were so smegging mind-numbingly unlovable.

You had to bring all of that back with you. If I were dead, it would be hard for me to be quite so annoying as I am in life, you know. Hologrammatic farts don't smell, and toenail clippings would disappear as soon as I spit them out. From what Holly told me, holo-food tastes like sawdust, so I wouldn't be suckin' down those curries, either. But yer type of annoyance is the kind that you don't need to be tangible to express. You could annoy just by whinging in that horrible whiny nasal voice, by putting one of those fingers to yer lips and grinning a smug grin with no humor, by running past me in yer underwear just to drive home how fit _you_ were when you died, because you had _discipline, Listy_ and were heading _up the ziggaraut_. And once there was no Hollister to put me in the brig if I punched ya, I couldn't even do that anymore.

That - I think I could deal with, though. Yer a pain in the arse, but I lived with it. No, you had to do something even worse, even more annoying, something I couldn't blow off or ignore.

You had to _change_.

You had to show concern when I was sick. You never cared before, you bastard. You had to lead off the GELF. You had to be stripped and chained and almost branded and buggered by that self-loathing beast of yours, just so I couldn't hate you anymore, knowing how much you hated yerself. You had to tell me about the soup, and the writer, and all of those things that made you a human and not a smeghead. You had to look so smegging hurt when I burned your chest that I wrote a song for you, and worse yet, you actually stayed and listened to every last sweet strain, even thought you called it a banshee wail. Peasant.

You had to make me want you, you smeg-headed bastard, once you were dead and made of light - unkissable, unfuckable. I dream of the crew as they were alive, sometimes, and I want Kochanski back; her, solid, real, warm, sweet. But I don't want you back. The you you were when you were solid and real. I want the you you are now, as officious and pompous as you still are, but I can't have it. If you only knew, you might think this was the best prank you ever pulled. But the only one who could possibly know is Kryten, and could he really guess just from the condition of my sheets? Maybe he did, and maybe that's why he split us up when we ended up on the 'Bug. I don't care. It's easier for me, not having to wait until I hear your whiffly sleep-breath below me. It's easier to have the Cat come in, some evenings, and bring up whatever it was you did that day to piss him off, to speculate on the power of microscope we'd need to see yer brain or yer tackle. It helps. It's a palliative, though, not a cure, and I have to watch you stalk around the midsection with your hands behind you, nose in the air, groin and chest puffed out in front, still a cowardly ass, but more of a man than you were when you were alive. Good enough for a grotty bum like me.

But not enough.

I once caught myself wishing you were _dead_-dead, so I could mourn the loss of a friend and move on. I felt like shit. But you haunt me like the ghost of smegheads past, and remind me, day after day, of what I can't have.

Smegging bastard.


End file.
